


when you're ready

by wirts



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Gen, also ive always wracked my brain for how they got to home from the unknown, and this is the only thing that made sense for me, anyway, getting back into the motion of things was difficult, i just thought this would be nice, idk - Freeform, not in content but, theres violence but nothing incredibly explicit, this is the first thing i've written to completion since last february, this was also really difficult for me to write?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29006019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wirts/pseuds/wirts
Summary: “Wait, Wirt.”“Huh?”“I don’t really… have opposable thumbs,” Beatrice said, blinking. She did need help, really, but she also just… wanted a better goodbye. “And I sort of need to be able to help the rest of my family, and none ofthemhave opposable thumbs either,so---”OR:beatrice wants a better goodbye.title from smoke signals by cavetown.
Relationships: Beatrice & Wirt (Over the Garden Wall), Gregory & Wirt (Over the Garden Wall)
Kudos: 17





	when you're ready

There was a grounding technique Wirt used at home during bouts of particularly bad anxiety. He would take note of three things around him - three things he could see, hear, and feel, in that order, and let them tether him to reality. Usually during those times, his heart would pound angrily against his ribcage, demanding immediate attention or to be set free. In this instance, his brain felt the same and his stomach still churned with hot discomfort, but his heart pounded lazily. It was too tired.

The three things he came up with were this: he could see his shoes, mismatched and covered in snow, wet and cold on his feet. He could hear what little leaves were left on the trees whipping in time with the ferocious wind stirring up the cold, detaching from their branches every now and then. He could feel the ache in his freezing, clammy hands, indented with the shape of the axe handle, which he used to chop away at the start of the edelwood tree that had nearly claimed his little brother.

Wirt exhaled. That was what was real to him right now. As miserable as it was, it was real, and… it was _over_. 

“I guess I should probably go home and tell my family they’ll be stuck as bluebirds,” Beatrice said from her perch on the edge of a nearby branch, eyes downtrodden and voice dripping with sorrow. With Adelaide long gone, she had no way to track down those scissors, and the Beast had been defeated. Wirt and Greg were going home. There was nothing else she could do.

After a moment of silence, Wirt reached deep into one of his pockets. There in the palm of his hand sat the coveted scissors; he almost felt guilty for hiding them for so long. He stared at Beatrice and waited for her to snark at him, berating him for not just helping her out so she wouldn’t have to deal with him any longer. 

“You had them this entire time?” she asked, leaning forward in her perplexity. Wirt was bracing himself for some sort of insult - he knew her well, and he wouldn’t doubt that she’d be swift to undercut him, especially with something as serious as this. The blow never came - instead, the soft feathers of her underbelly pressed to his cheek as she flitted toward him, using her wings to cradle his face the best she could. _Oh_. 

“Yeah,” he said, holding back a laugh that he didn’t feel would be appropriately placed, but would’ve cushioned the scant discomfort he was harboring yet, “I was-- I was sort of… mad at you.”

Beatrice could almost cackle. Almost. Instead, she used what she could of her wingspan to hold Wirt’s face a little tighter, eyes closed as she pressed into the embrace. “Oh, you wonderful freak of nature,” she tearfully praised, overwhelmed with relief. Wirt managed a soft smile; things would end well for all three of them, it seemed.

“Yeah -- sorry I didn’t give them to you before. The whole… Adelaide thing, and then we got separated, and -- yeah. I-I was sort of mad at you.” Wirt stumbled through his phrasing, offering a half-hearted shrug. He didn’t need to walk her through it. She had lived it, too. 

“I can’t blame you. I probably… I probably would’ve done the same thing. Maybe worse,” Beatrice said honestly. “ _Probably_ worse,” Wirt quipped, lightly teasing. They shared a smile.

After a moment of mutually pensive silence, Wirt spoke. “I should get Greg home,” he said, looking down at the exhausted little boy in his arms. The dark circles under his eyes broke his heart all over again. Another sharp pang in his chest reminded him that this was _his_ fault, after all, and it was up to him to deliver the both of them to safety. At this point, it seemed like it was the least he could do. 

“Yeah, probably,” Beatrice mumbled, glancing away before taking her leave, back to the branch she’d been sitting on before. She didn’t expect a goodbye to be this hard - she had spent the better of their time together being crude to both of them (more Wirt than Greg). She didn’t realize just how attached she’d grown to the two brothers until it was time to part.

Wirt nodded and hiked Greg carefully up, adjusting the tired body in his arms in a way that was hopefully comfortable for the both of them. 

“Wait, Wirt.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t really… have opposable thumbs,” Beatrice said, blinking. She did need help, really, but she also just… wanted a better goodbye. “And I sort of need to be able to help the rest of my family, and none of _them_ have opposable thumbs either, _so_ \--”

Wirt smiles, relieved that he gets another go-around at parting words. “You need my help for a change,” he says, and he’s almost smug about it. “Look at that.”

“Yeah, whatever, are you going to help me or not?” _There’s the Beatrice that he knows._

“I-- yeah, yes. Yes, I’m going to help you. Just come here.”

Wirt carefully maneuvered himself so that he was in the position to set Greg down, but not before removing his cape. He wrapped the thick blue fabric around his brother (and frog) to act as a shield from the biting cold, and used it to gently cushion his body from the abrasive, unforgiving snow as he set him down. 

On the stump of a failed edelwood tree, Wirt sat. Beatrice perched herself on his knee and looked up at him. “I’m scared this is going to hurt,” he said, pulling the scissors back into view. Beatrice gawked, glaring up at him. “You’re scared this is going to hurt?!” she demanded, and his eyes went wide as he looked down at the angry bluebird adorning his kneecap.

“Well, yeah, I don’t want to hurt you,” Wirt said flatly, brows furrowed. He thought that much had been obvious - but he also understood how it could’ve been interpreted as him piggybacking off of her pain, as if he didn’t have enough of that on his own. “A-and I can’t even, like, sterilize these. It feels like I should be sterilizing them.”

“Wirt.”

“Right,” he sighed, using his free hand to gingerly lift up Beatrice’s right wing. “Do you know if I have to just clip the feathers? Or do I have to - oh, gross - sever the _entire_ thing?”

Beatrice bridled. “No, I never got into the specifics of everything with Adelaide,” she said, defeated. She wished now that she would’ve done more talking and less arguing. Wirt only exhaled in response. “Okay, we’ll try-- we can try both.”

His unsure gait was striking a chord in her nerves as well. Beatrice liked to consider herself to be unflappable, but it was hard when Wirt was so hell-bent on going straight to the realistic root of every situation he found himself in. She trusted him, nonetheless - she had to, who else was going to free her? Another pair of lost brothers she’d find in the woods? _Hah_.

“Okay, so I just…” Wirt mumbled, brows furrowed in soft focus as he nudged her wing around. He clipped off a few of the feathers under her wing, brushing them off of his lap. The blue smattered starkly across the white ground beneath them, decorating the destroyed landscape with muddled delicacy that seemed out of place next to the chaos. Wirt gazed lamely upon the little bird when nothing seemed to be changing.

“Maybe we just have to wait,” Wirt lamented. He wanted to choose optimism over potential bloodshed. Beatrice, against his knee, looked unconvinced - they were, after all, dealing with a witch and her curse. It didn’t seem like the easy way out would be the correct option.

Wirt stole a glance in Greg’s direction. Even unconscious, he looked pale and weak, and he could tell they were losing time. There was no time for waiting.

“I don’t think so,” Beatrice said after a moment of heavy silence, following Wirt’s gaze. She felt that she knew what he was thinking. She was thinking the same thing, too.

It just didn’t seem that there would ever be a good time for this. Wirt didn’t want to cause Beatrice pain, much less any bloodshed, but he was doing the right thing. This was all he could do, and he had to get Greg home. Any time he’d had to stall was lost on him by now.

A sigh. “Alright,” he said quietly, adjusting the golden scissors in his fingers again. “I’m going to try to make this as quick as possible --”  
  
“Then stop _talking_ and just _do_ it!”

_You can do it, Wirt. You can do it, Wirt. You have to get Greg home. You can **do it.**_

Wirt’s fingers close the gap between both themselves and the scissor handles, and he presses the blades down against the bird’s scapula, severing it thusly. Beatrice writhes and Wirt mutters multiple shaky apologies. “I’m so sorry,” he says, like it’s a ritual he needs to chant, and she responds, “please just keep _going_ ,” because the worst has to be over at some point.

Beatrice tries to block out the snapping of bones and reminds herself that this body does not belong to her. She’s going to go back to normal, and everything’s going to be fine. The idea of having to repeat this process with her entire family dawns on her not long after, and her blood runs cold.

Wirt’s shaking fingers are both numb from the unforgiving cold and covered in blood. The metallic pang hits his nose and the way that Beatrice is convulsing, he feels like a villain. He’s doing the right thing, he reminds himself. This is something he has to do.

He turns the little bird over onto her other side and delves the blade through the bone and flesh there - the second time is hardly as bad as the first, and his digits have mostly steadied themselves. Wirt stares down at the mess he’s made in maroon against the grey backsplash of his pants, and then at the blue feathers splattered with darkening crimson. 

It feels like there’s nowhere good to look. Around him, the ground is littered with footprints and evidence of a struggle. Greg is clothed in his cloak and the dark circles under his eyes make Wirt’s stomach hurt. The woods ahead of him are too dark to see into. Beatrice on his lap…

In the short few moments he’d taken to look around, Beatrice had disappeared from his lap. 

The feathers remained lying on the ground at his feet and stuck to his pant legs, but his avian friend is nowhere to be found. A panic rises slowly in his chest; catastrophically, he fears the worst, before coughing befalls his ears. It doesn’t sound like it’s coming from Greg - no, it can’t be, the noises sound all too feminine, not to mention much too far away to be coming from his brother. 

“Beatrice?”

“Could you give me a second? Jeez.”

The relief that washed over him was enough for him to feel a physical swell in his chest -- dramatically, Wirt raised a hand to his chest and held it there, cradling his heart like it might fall out of his body if he didn’t hold it tight enough.

The seconds felt like hours as they passed; he was eager to see proof that he hadn’t massacred his friend, mostly, but Wirt would be lying if he said he’d never wondered what Beatrice looked like as a girl. He knew that she wasn’t always a bird, but for some reason, it was hard for him to picture her like him -- with hands and features, extremities that weren’t talons or wings.

“Over here, jerk.”

Wirt tugged himself out of his reverie and turned his head toward the sound of her voice. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but Beatrice was _tall_. He looked her over and took her in: the freckles lightly speckling her otherwise porcelain skin, the fiery red hair that fell in ringlets around her face where it wasn’t long enough to be pinned back, and eyes that were far kinder than her beady little bird eyes. She looked everything like how he thought she would, but at the same time, he’d never been able to fully conceptualize her -- she just made sense, without his input. This was Beatrice, his friend. And she was the first thing that he felt truly made sense since he’d stepped foot into The Unknown.

“I’m glad that worked,” Wirt heaved, releasing the breath he’d been holding. He was beyond relieved. Beatrice cast her eyes downward and let out a quiet laugh in response, nodding. “It’s cold,” she said after a beat of silence, and Wirt, shielded from the cold only by his thin button down, nodded his agreement.

The wind whipped about, nearly taking Wirt’s hat off of his head, and pulling flyaways into Beatrice’s face. There was no time to sit and talk - Greg was fading, and Beatrice’s family needed her. The winter wouldn’t give way just so they could properly meet one another. 

“Are you in any pain?” Wirt asked, breaking the loud silence. Beatrice shook her head and rubbed chilled hands up her freezing arms. It didn’t help, but she did it anyway. “No,” she said after a moment. “I’m hungry, though.”

Wirt nodded. The sense of urgency was returning to him as the relief was falling away; he needed to go home. Beatrice needed to go home. 

“Here.”

Wirt handed Beatrice the scissors, and gave her a small, sullen smile. She reached out and took them, sliding them into a pocket in her dress. He actually passed a soft chuckle, then - it would be exactly like Beatrice to have pockets in her dress. 

“Thank you, Wirt,” she said. Beatrice’s hand lingered a moment longer in her pocket just to verify the scissors were there - it didn’t dawn on her yet that her worst nightmare would soon be over, and she wanted to ensure the reality of it all. 

“Thank _you_ ,” Wirt said with finality. He didn’t say that it was time to go, but Beatrice could tell by his tone and meter that it was. She felt ready - her mother would be elated to know that she hadn’t failed, and that alone cushioned the blow of an incredibly sad, likely permanent farewell.

Without words, Wirt removed his hat and stepped forward to encase Beatrice in a tight hug. Beatrice wound her arms around his neck and gave a soft squeeze, settling her cheek comfortably against his shoulder. For a fleeting moment, she wished she hadn’t been so cruel for so long. She was grateful for the chance to make up for it.

“Goodbye, Beatrice,” he said quietly. Wirt felt like he bore the weight of all of The Unknown on his shoulders in that moment.

“Goodbye, Wirt,” Beatrice murmured, giving him a final squeeze before letting go. 

Beatrice meandered back toward the tree her family had taken shelter in - she’d been keeping track of it secretly the entire time. She’d never felt as lonely as she did then, creating footsteps next to Wirt’s that weren’t there before, one set going forward, the other set, unfinished, going back.

Wirt hoisted Greg carefully onto his back, grunting quietly as he replaced his hat, and took to standing up straight. There was a new clarity that filled him; he knew where to go. Home wasn’t far now.

He walked the previously confusing paths in the woods with newfound confidence - his blood was pumping hard through his body, every step feeling dramatically punctuated. Around the circumference of a small pond, Wirt tread carefully. The snow on the ground was starting to melt, and the ground beneath was both thawing and slippery. One moment of reckless footfall could cause them both to hurtle into the water - something Wirt wanted to avoid.

Even in his caution, Wirt hadn’t accounted for twigs, or rocks. He’d prepared for mudslides and black ice - the typical things found on slippery ground, naturally - but not twigs, or rocks. As he stepped forward, he couldn’t help the trepidation that pulled at his gut. But he was used to anxiety - fear was no stranger to him. He took a deep breath and another step forward, faltering a bit when his foot slid. After he steadied himself, he let ouch a quiet laugh - he had stared the Beast in the face and denied him his deal, after all. What was a little bit of bad weather?

Another step forward - it didn’t even register to him that he was tumbling until he’d already hit the water. 

His vision was blurry and the water was clouded, and, god, was it cold. But Greg -- he needed to find Greg before resurfacing. He puffed his cheeks as he braced himself for depth, pushing against the current of the water as he continued downward.

He grabbed the boy and the frog both in quick succession, propelling all three of them upward towards the water’s edge. Wirt hoisted Greg back onto his shoulders and stood up only to keel over on the bank where the water met the land, raising his head a bit. He blinked slowly - things felt like they were spinning. 

“Help,” was all he could mutter, and even in his disoriented state, he was sure that his voice didn’t meet anybody’s ears but his own. 

And then he was crashing - before his face hard met the rocky ground, he could make out a few silhouettes, jumbled, familiar voices, and the urgent, unmistakable flashing of red and blue lights.

**Author's Note:**

> i said it in the tags but this is the first thing i've written to completion since before the pandemic, last february. mostly i'm just grateful to be creating again. ANYWAY....... kudos and comments are most appreciated <3 you can find me on twitter @otgws, and on tumblr @onaboat!


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